I am in a convoluted arrangement with my dog. We've had some heavy petting together, but never actual sex, and she doesn't seem interested in that at all. That is frustrating to me - in a human-human relationship, the constantly unmet needs from lack of sex would be valid grounds for a breakup... but you can't really break up with a dog, can you? She doesn't even recognize that as a concept, and the idea that I'd just abandon her (for such a selfish reason, no less) is just cruel, dogs are closely emotionally invested in the people they live around, plus she has nobody out there but my family. If you break up with a homeless girl on amicable terms, what do you do, kick her back out on the street?
With my dog I can at least rest assured that she has no ill intent behind it, she just has a different way of expressing love than I do. So on one hand I'm "suppressing myself for her sake", but I am attached to her in a platonic way as well - she might not be my de facto romantic partner, but at the end of the day she's still my little cuddly fuzzball. Yet, I still desire to experience true romance and sex, and I find it difficult to balance pursuing my desire with the urge to stay committed to my dog. It's a strange feeling, normally I condemn cheating in human relationships and I never thought of myself as ever becoming an adulterer, and yet I've basically resigned myself to that position by this point. Animals aren't dramatically affected in the act of cheating per se, but the habit of viewing even animal-human relations through a human morality lens (thus principally straying away from cheating) is hard to break.
